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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: BLOODBORNEA primer on what’s new and what to expect with roughly 30 hours of playtime as of March 28th.Not a comprehensive review.Written with the expectation that the reader has played a Souls game, or is at least familiar with the mechanics of the series.COMPLETELY SPOILER FREE Bloodborne is the latest game from Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki and developer From Software. A spiritual successor to the Souls series, the easiest way to describe Bloodborne is as an amalgamation of all the horror themed levels of the previous games amplified tenfold, with guns.

GAMEPLAY If you’ve played a Souls game, you’ll be mostly familiar with combat, but some serious changes alter the feel of fighting significantly. The removal of blocking is far and away my favorite design choice. I was apprehensive at first about the idea of forgoing shields altogether, but in practice it makes for a much faster and more active fight system. Passive and patient fights of the Souls series are still near and dear to my heart, but such gameplay wouldn’t compliment the feel of Bloodborne nearly as well. Being forced to dodge away from monsters is a genius design choice, and the generous invincibility frames while doing so keeps combat fair and almost always in the players control. The feeling of vulnerability is heightened to extremes never felt in previous games.